


Any Sum You Care to Mention

by Ferrero13



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 5 Things, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-19
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-14 14:26:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/516176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferrero13/pseuds/Ferrero13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Money has bought Mycroft Holmes many things, but they will never buy the things most important to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Weight Loss

Over the years, Mycroft Holmes discovered that there were some things that you didn’t just buy with money. Instead, if you wanted and needed them enough, they came to you on their own.

 **ONE  
** _Weight Loss_  

He had always been a chubby sort of boy. His brother, on the other hand, was so thin toothpicks simply bristled with envy. It wasn’t that he ate excessively (although he did so love cake and any sort of pastries) but more because there had never been anything mentally challenging enough to burn away all those calories he consumed. He detested physical exertion—do not ever mention it in his presence. The mere thought of physical activity made his joints ache.

There came a time in his teenage years when his mother finally voiced her ever-growing concern about his recent spate of weight gain. In her defence, Mycroft had binged a little (just a _little_ ) to celebrate his newest achievement of being the highest scorer of his year (again)— a streak he kept up until now that was rivalled only by his brother’s.

“Mycroft, dear, perhaps you should consider laying off the cakes?”

“Mummy, I’m not _fat_.”

“Of course not, Mycroft dear, but extra caution never did hurt anyone.”

It was only when Sherlock gleefully poked him in his sides with alarming and frankly embarrassing frequency afterwards that Mycroft resolved to shed some of his dead weight.

That was easier said than done.

In the next two years until he graduated from university (valedictorian, of course), he’d gained even more weight as he grew even taller. He cut an imposing figure at over six foot and a hundred kilograms when he delivered his graduation speech.

Any video recordings of that particular event had been eliminated post-haste as soon as the means was acquired.

He assumed it had been a dietary problem, so he worked on eating less and working out more. As far as he knew, physical activity made no difference to his weight, and he therefore gladly gave up all forms of exercise and focused on his diet. Diet, however, was emphatically ineffective in halting his ballooning weight, so that too became a discarded plan and he delightedly allowed himself to once again act on his love for cakes.

The solution, it turned out, was stress.

His work in the government finally started to challenge him mentally, consuming that much more sugars than he would otherwise without any mental stimulation. Apparently, university had been too much of a cakewalk for him (pun intended).

As his career advanced, his weight loss spiralled alarmingly out of control until one day he looked himself in the mirror and thought, half-pleased and half-mortified, “I actually look like my brother’s brother.”

They were a matching pair now; like chopsticks, long and lean. Sherlock did so love Chinese food.


	2. Sherlock's Compliance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the end, it wasn't anything Mycroft could do that would help him. Sherlock found his salvation on his own.

**TWO  
** _Sherlock’s Compliance_

 

Ever since Sherlock was a baby, it had been an uphill battle keeping him engaged for anything longer than a second. He could be eyeing a book intensely one moment and the next have decided that the bright purple flower in the vase at the end of the hall looked like an interesting piece of dissection material. Their mother would tell him to put the flower down and the next day it would be found with its petals scattered all over the place.

He loved his brother, really, he did, but Sherlock’s wilfulness was as annoying as his slimness had been when Mycroft was still trying to lose weight.

Then, one day, Sherlock moved out of their parents’ home and Mycroft didn’t know what to make of it. Was it merely to prove a point? Because if it was then he would be home in a couple of days once he was done proving whatever hypothesis he’d conjured out of thin air. They let him alone for a month, before conceding that maybe Sherlock finally wanted his independence.

Thus, the chick left its nest and set up home elsewhere.

The flat at Montague Street was…tolerable, at a stretch, and downright foul if Mycroft were to not mince words. It was during the one month away that Sherlock fell into the habit of using.

Mycroft tracked him down and walked right into Sherlock’s flat unannounced. In his right mind, with his brilliant mind at even half its capacity, his brother would have noticed his presence and yelled at him to leave before he even got out of the cab. Instead, Mycroft found his obstinate younger brother stretched out on his shapeless sofa with a disturbingly childlike grin on his face.

He didn’t need to see the countless needles and empty sachets strewn around the settee to infer their presence. What else would cause Sherlock to relinquish rationality and logic, the tenets that he so prided himself on?

“Sherlock.”

“Hello, Mycroft, how nice of you to drop by and grace my humble abode with your gluttonous presence.”

Let it not be said that Sherlock loses his ability to insult when out of touch with reality.

“Stop this.”

“No.”

They struggled for years about Sherlock’s habit. There was much yelling and throwing and threatening on both sides, until Mycroft finally kept true his word and had Sherlock taken away for rehabilitation at the most expensive and reputable centre he could source.

He relapsed within a month of his release.

What got him to eventually decide to stop using was his work as a Consulting Detective. A Detective Inspector from Scotland Yard told Sherlock that he was under no circumstances allowed to work on their cases unless he was clean and completely off drugs, and Mycroft was eternally grateful for him.

When Captain John Hamish Watson, formerly of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, limped his way into Sherlock’s life at 221B Baker Street (Mycroft greatly approved of the move from Montague Street), Mycroft was finally able to set his mind to rest about his brother’s drug habits. 


	3. John's Alliance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps Sherlock has finally found what he needed all along in a jaded ex-army medic recently returned from Afghanistan.

**THREE  
** _John’s Alliance_

 

John’s unassuming countenance nearly fooled Mycroft into believing that he would be easy to bribe with the lure of money. A laid-off soldier living in London on his army pension alone did not possess the most ideal of financial backgrounds. The fact that he allowed Sherlock to push and pull him in any direction almost convinced him that the promise of monetary incentive would be enough to sway him.

He should have known otherwise—any man who was able to be pushed and pulled by Sherlock without resorting to extreme coping measures would have to be commended for his tenacity and tolerance.

Besides, Mycroft had to admit, if he could be tempted by money he did not deserve to even know Sherlock.

So he tolerated the ex-soldier’s instant rejection of his offer of a meaningful sum of money, and despite taunting the man’s bravery he was very much impressed by his loyalty and unyielding resolution. He knew, then, that this man would stand by his brother through thick and thin without asking for anything in compensation.

If there ever was proof of a God, this came the closest, by Mycroft’s reckoning.

Whenever they spoke (whenever Mycroft sent a black car to… _pick up_ John from the street), John was curt and polite and always on his guard. It warmed Mycroft’s blackened heart to know that he was looking out for Sherlock so fiercely that he wouldn’t even trust his brother.

Or, an insidious part of him thought, perhaps John Watson was merely doing so because he felt Mycroft was some sort of a threat to him – he wouldn’t be a fool for thinking so.

But, perhaps, John did have a good reason for not being completely open with him. He had, after all, tried to win him over with something as petty as currency.

“Please do keep an eye on him, John. You know how he loves to fling himself into every available dangerous situation.”

“You’re asking the wrong man.”

“Oh, no, I know who exactly I’m asking this of, and I assure you that I am never wrong.”

“Arrogance must run in the family.”

It started stiff and impersonal at first. John had been quite reluctant to speak about Sherlock at all. He would just sit in his chair (or stand, when there were no seats) and look stonily at Mycroft with all the expression of a punched wall until Mycroft gave in and offered him something to drink.

Tea always did the trick, although spirits worked just as fine, as long as they weren’t in excess.

He never offered up anything Mycroft did not ask for, always to the point and succinct.

Mycroft tried his very best not to push. He knew about most things already, after all; his security camera network was rather extensive.

Gradually, he began to hear more about what living with Sherlock was like now, not what dangers they got into in order to solve their previous case or which informants they’d unwittingly (or perhaps deliberately, one never knew with Sherlock) provoked such that they needed Mycroft’s intervention to avoid any bloodshed. It was nice to hear of the little things, like which Scotland Yard officers Sherlock managed to make into enemies, and which actually tolerated Sherlock as a co-worker.

Which reminded Mycroft, he really needed to thank one Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade for putting up with his brother despite all his suffering under Sherlock’s constant verbal abuse.


	4. Lestrade's Company

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just when Mycroft thought he had all the company he would ever need, he stumbled upon one which filled a hole he never knew existed.

**FOUR**   
_Lestrade’s Company_

 

That which had started out as a simple meeting to convey his appreciation for the Detective Inspector’s tolerance of Sherlock’s antics ended with a dinner during which Lestrade detailed the hundred and one things Sherlock had done in the past year which should have gotten him an ASBO at the very least.

Mycroft found it mildly entertaining that someone could rant so long about something so inane using scathing words that implied annoyance while employing a tone which conveyed fondness.

The Detective Inspector had much in common with their mutual acquaintance, John, although they were both distinctly different sort of men who dealt with Sherlock in distinctly different fashions. They both put up with his brother and his eccentricities, which nobody aside from them (and Mycroft) ever tried to, and it said much about how accommodative they were toward annoyances—always a good thing in Mycroft’s book.

But where John would not be paid any amount to move out from Baker Street, Detective Inspector Lestrade had sufficient self-preservation instinct to reject any and all offers Mycroft made to move in with the Consulting Detective (somewhere, in the back of his head, Sherlock’s voice continued with, “the only one in the world”).

Mycroft admired the Detective Inspector’s ability to walk the fine line between being generous enough to Sherlock (so that Mycroft would find no reason to, perhaps, accidentally arrange for his car’s brakes to suddenly stop functioning, like one Anderson’s did on a day with terrible weather) and valuing his existence (so that the Detective Inspector would live to see past forty-five).

It was highly commendable, but a man in his position at work would have to know how to tread that line carefully, after all. It was a dangerous career; one never knew when a vengeful elder brother would exact his very well-planned and untraceable revenge.

It was rare that Mycroft found a man so ordinary quite as fascinating as Detective Inspector Lestrade, so it came as no surprise that he wished to continue their acquaintanceship on a more frequent basis.

“Tea again, Detective Inspector? I would be happy to accommodate you again at the Diogenes Club.”

“Uh, yeah, thanks, but no. That high-end place doesn’t agree with me.”

Of all ways to turn down a servant of the British government, this seemed very polite for a man who, earlier, had cursed his brother’s unpredictability and frustrating autonomy for a solid hour.

“Very well, I shall see to it that you are not disturbed again.”

“Hey, no, that’s not what I meant. Are you always as presumptuous as your brother?”

That was oddly insulting.

“I had assumed that you no longer wish for my company. Was I wrong?”

The Detective Inspector then proceeded to tell him to call him “Greg” and to “stop with this whole ‘Detective Inspector’ bullshit because I know the rank means nothing to you.” That was about as straightforward as one could get, in Mycroft’s opinion—crass, but elegant, at least, in its simplicity and lack of convoluted logic.

“Greg, then.”

Next time, they met at a coffee shop close to Scotland Yard and talked of nothing remotely related to Sherlock.


	5. His Identity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just as he thought he'd lost himself to the maws of bureaucratic secrecy, someone came by and showed him that he existed.

**FIVE**  
 _His Identity_

 

When it was time to pack up his office and move the boxes to his impersonal apartment which looked brand new despite being over two decades old, it was with slight trepidation that he sealed the last box. He was old now, too old (and too expensive) to remain as the man behind the scenes, who pulled the strings of every single person in Great Britain with certain knowledge of its consequences, and it was only logical that he gave way to a younger (cheaper, more dispensable) person (or persons, for Mycroft was, after all, of superior intellect) to take his position.

He had been everywhere and nowhere, the eye behind every security camera (and numerous other personal devices) that monitored the comings and goings of ordinary British folks, the one whom people never noticed existed but who was essential to their very lives, if merely by virtue of intervening before his brother managed to inevitably upset the Defence Minister of a well-armed—and potentially terrorist-ridden—country.

He was everybody, yet nobody. He could, with his talents, replace anyone in the world, and had, in fact, been called to stand in for the Prime Minister on occasion when said politician was too busy dipping his fingers in unsavoury pies (which Mycroft had to later vanish without leaving traces).

The name “Mycroft Holmes” meant nothing to the ordinary person. He was, for security reasons, a man who did not exist. His name was on a need-to-know basis, and his occupation only ever implied. Common folk feared men with too much power, and politicians even more. It was for the good of humanity that all his records were erased, that he only ever existed in memories as a ghostly spectre, glossed over in conversation for more meaty topics.

Then, Sherlock happened, and “Mycroft Holmes” meant something. Everyone possessing of “Holmes” as their last name was under immediate suspect as Sherlock’s lower-profile relative. Media hounds would not let up if they caught wind of him, but Mycroft was used to flying under the radar. He had more practice at it than any other man dead or alive could claim.

He was not to ever have existed, after all.

He had been fine with that, initially. He had had his share of attention as the youngest graduate in the history of tertiary education (until Sherlock broke his record, but in Mycroft’s defence, he had spent the better part of university apprenticed to his predecessor of world domination via inconspicuous British government positions). The peace and quiet gave him reprieve to grow his mind and feed his thirst for knowledge (and domination), which had been impossible as snow in hot deserts prior to the complete wipe-out of documents testifying his existence.

He had since grown weary of such anonymity. He never wished to be known as “Sherlock Holmes’ insignificant brother.” He had a name, but the world seemed ignorant of anything but his last, and even then only because his brother had been the one to bring it to attention.

The namelessness grew oppressive, suffocating even. Was there really nothing left for him? Nothing left for “Mycroft” but the shared light of his brother’s fame, which even then shone on him diminished and faded?

He loaded the boxes into the back of the sleek, black government vehicle. The aide bade him farewell and returned to the building. This was supposed to be the end of life as a nobody, yet it felt merely like another day in a long string of lonely days when even his shadow fled from his company. What was there for him? He had no friends to speak of, not even a convenience store cashier to know him for his frequent patronage. At least, while he still wielded power, he had assistants who knew his name and work habits, if nothing else.

His records have all been restored after he terminated his service, but he would still live as an isolated entity drifting through the world of interconnected individuals; a solitary existence. Nobody would remember him after he died; there would be nobody to mourn his passing or cherish his memory.

It would be as if he never existed.

Nothing would change.

A hand on his shoulder pulled him out of his heavy thoughts, and he turned to meet the flushed face of retired Detective Chief Inspector Gregory Lestrade. ‘Greg,’ Mycroft reflexively corrected in his mind, and noted, absently and detachedly, that the man had two more wrinkles than he had when they last met not two weeks ago. They were laugh lines, he realised belatedly. He and Greg could not be more different. Greg had, at least, had a fulfilling retirement. Mycroft would not; he only had days of solitude ahead of him.

“I thought I’d missed you,” Greg said, to which Mycroft gave him a flat look of intense disbelief. Greg squawked indignantly, “What? Is it illegal to meet someone on his last day of work now?”

“How did you come by this information? It is—was—classified.”

“Sherlock,” Greg said, and it explained everything. “Look, I know you’re supposed to be top secret, and I respect that, but it’s all over now so I am allowed to whisper your name in public, right?”

It was sometimes hard to discern if Greg was being serious.

“I am under the impression that the use of my name is not illegal. Not yet, anyway.”

Greg started walking down the street. “Good. I know a good café around the corner that just opened up.” Just as Mycroft thought Greg had finally gone senile and started talking to himself, Greg threw a glance back at him (against logic, Mycroft’s heart thudded painfully with something akin to hope, relief), a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes (against logic, Mycroft found those additional lines beautiful), and said, “Care to have lunch with an old, ex-policeman, Mycroft?”

The future suddenly seemed a lot brighter as he set down the last box and took Greg’s outstretched hand, walking away from the life _(shackles)_ he had finally managed to leave behind him.

* * *

Once, there was a man who was not alone.

His name was Mycroft.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this concludes the series of things-Mycroft-wishes-he-could-buy-with-the-frankly-despicable-pile-of-money-he-doesn't-know-what-to-do-with. I contemplated writing about Mrs. Hudson in chapter 5 but I wanted a greater challenge for my imagination (and more leeway). Mycroft has been shown interacting with Mrs. Hudson before, but I don't recall seeing him with Lestrade (although I logically know they must have met because Lestrade was associated with Mycroft's wily ways in The Hounds of Baskerville by Sherlock). Let us pretend Mrs. Hudson was simply too old to survive until Mycroft's inevitable retirement, Sherlock has either been killed in one of his more daring exploits (think exploding skulls) or died from fumes overdose (all those hours in the lab experimenting must not be too good), and John's too caught up in his death to even think about Mycroft and his retirement.


End file.
